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Star Parker explains how a free country enables anyone to transform themselves at any time: With all the attention the national debate between socialism and capitalism is getting, a new book has arrived on the scene that casts valuable perspective.

The book is "Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement," written by Forbes Magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard.

Karlgaard takes on the cult of youth that is capturing so much of our popular culture, particularly on the left.

He reminds us in this important book that life is about learning, accumulation of wisdom, self-renewal and, in the best cases, prevailing against adversity. These are all the fruits of age and experience.

A late bloomer, says Karlgaard, is "a person who fulfills their potential later than expected; they often have talents that aren't visible to others initially. The key word here is expected ." And he goes on to tell stories of individuals who faced frustration and even disillusionment in their youth and went on to great achievement later in life.

This, in contrast to "early bloomers" — personalities such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who, at age 23, was the youngest self-made billionaire to ever appear on Forbes Magazine's billionaire list.

But what is missed by those who look with awe at these youthful achievers is that the most important lesson to be learned is often the exact lesson that is missed.

That lesson is that youthful success should be taken with humility and gratitude, because it is the product of natural gifts and good fortune.

The late bloomer, on the other hand, who struggles to find his or her way, who has the character to transcend disappointment, build anew and, in the end, accumulate valuable wisdom is the model in life who should get far more attention than is afforded in our culture.

What lessons lie here for the socialism vs. capitalism debate?

Just as the individual early bloomer benefits from natural gifts of talent and circumstance, similarly, the youth of the nation inherit the bounty that is the result of the work of previous generations.

And just as the phenomenon of renewal lies with the late bloomer overcoming and rediscovering and reinventing oneself, similarly, national renewal lies with a free economy and the ability to change and adapt.

We have a good example in energy.

In the 1970s, everyone thought the world was running out of oil. Then-President Carter declared a national energy crisis and in 1977 established the Department of Energy.

There was great concern about both diminishing supplies of what was thought to be a limited natural resource and U.S. dependence on foreign oil imports.

But today, the United States is producing more oil and gas than it ever has in history. This all thanks to technological innovations having everything to do with the creativity of free individuals and nothing to do with government and politics.

The U.S. is now projected to be totally energy independent by next year.

There is also a lesson here about planning.

Socialists would have us believe that good planning can solve all our problems...read more...

Star Parker: How a free country allows anyone to transform themselves With all the attention the national debate between socialism and capitalism is getting, a new book has arrived on the scene that casts valuable persp ...

Newt Gingrich describes what is missing from Robert Francis 'Beto' O'Rourke's campaign:

Robert Francis O’Rourke’s first few days as a presidential candidate reminded me how much we miss the great talent of Tom Wolfe.

Wolfe had an amazing, profound capacity for looking beneath the glitter, the fakery, and the hypocrisy that defines much of our culture. Wolfe’s 1970 publication of Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers challenged the political correctness and hypocritical posturing of the liberal elites.

Wolfe would have loved Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. He would have understood from the opening moments of the “Beto Bandwagon,” that there is a “me-centered” nature of O’Rourke’s existence.

I must confess the evolution of O’Rourke since losing the Senate race to Ted Cruz has surprised me. It was clear he was a champion of the Left. Like the narrowly defeated Democrats in Georgia and Florida, he seemed to have gained more stature from defeat than the vast number of Democrats who actually won in 2018.

However, I thought he would take his $80 million donor base, his charm, and his remarkable nationwide name-ID (especially for a defeated candidate) and develop a thoughtful moral cause larger than himself.

For the first few days after O’Rourke’s loss to Cruz, I compared his position to that of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. O’Rourke had served three terms. Lincoln lost narrowly to an incumbent senator. In those days, voters elected members of the state legislature, who then elected senators. Republicans got a small majority of the popular vote to the legislature, the makeup of the legislature saved Senator Stephen Douglas from defeat.

However, this parallel seemed to collapse after Election Day.

Lincoln shrewdly understood that his candidacy had to be about a cause much larger than himself. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were published and widely read among Republican activists. Lincoln emerged as a very thoughtful critic of slavery and a leader of moral stature. His speech at Cooper Union on February 27, 1860 was widely reprinted verbatim in northern newspapers and solidified his position as a moral and thought leader (Harold Holzer’s book Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President is one of the best books on leadership and strategy I have ever read).

I assumed O’Rourke would recognize that his donor base and name identification were only a springboard – that he would have to define a moral cause large enough to justify an outsider nomination and election to be president. I was wrong.

First, we had “Beto the Traveler.” As one reporter commented, it was like watching Jack Kerouac creating On the Road as a 21st century venture in finding yourself. As Beto wandered from town to town, it almost looked as though the great leader from Texas was seeking meaning in other people and other moments. It was the opposite of Lincoln’s composed, disciplined, mature approach to leadership.

Then we got the maximum liberal establishment buildup. Vanity Fair gave him the full cover magazine launch with photos by Annie Leibovitz (nothing says “establishment approval as an icon” better than a Leibovitz photo shoot). In the glowing, fawning Vanity Fair article, we learned that O’Rourke had a “near-mystical experience” during a major rally in his Senate race.

This all out media launch set the stage for O’Rourke’s modest announcement to Vanity Fair that “Man, I’m just born to be in it.” He later clarified that it was the presidential race and not the presidency, but it was still a telling comment.

Unlike Lincoln, for whom the cause was freedom and the union, the O’Rourke candidacy is about O’Rourke...read more >>

Newt Gingrich: What Beto O'Rourke's campaign is really about Robert Francis O’Rourke’s first few days as a presidential candidate reminded me how much we miss the great talent of Tom Wolfe. Wolfe ...

Star Parker asks: What happens when liberal fascists ambush Chelsea Clinton?

I recently joined the board of the Leadership Institute, which sponsors Campus Reform, an important website for college news. Campus Reform is a "watchdog to the nation's higher education system," exposing bias and abuse on college campuses.

American universities have too often dangerously devolved into institutions of political indoctrination rather than institutions of higher learning. According to one recent study of the 60 highest-rated liberal arts colleges in the nation, more than 10 professors are registered Democrats for every registered Republican.

Campus Reform monitors universities in hopes of keeping speech free and maintaining vestiges of the pursuit of truth.

Politicization of universities is indicative of a nation that has lost a sense that there is truth and that it is incumbent upon man to seek it, grasp it, live by it and use it to improve our world.

Students now show up at universities already armed with what they have accepted uncritically as true — gleaned from the internet, Hollywood and other fertile corners of popular culture. Universities simply serve as platforms for them to advance their political agendas and get official stamps of approval for their careers.

A recent example is the pathetic display of two New York University students who cornered Chelsea Clinton at a vigil noting the tragedy of the murder of 50 Muslims in New Zealand.

They stuck accusing fingers in Clinton's face, claiming that her condemnation of the anti-Semitism of Rep. Ilhan Omar somehow fueled anti-Muslim bigotry and contributed to what resulted in the massacre of innocent Muslims in New Zealand.

According to these ignorant young accusers, Clinton's criticism of Rep. Omar was about being anti-Muslim, anti-black and misogynist.

Back in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his most famous speech, in which he shared, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

In a very strange turn of history, after that great struggle to fix what was broken in America and make this a greater, more just country, we have gone backward.

The color of one's skin, one's s*x, one's ethnicity, one's religious heritage and the kind of s*xual partners one chooses have become the only things that matter in today's popular left-wing culture.

Content of character and quality of thought — core requirements of a responsible citizen in a free country — no longer matter in our bizarre world gone crazy.

Clinton said nothing about Omar's race, s*x or religion. She only criticized, very legitimately, Omar's slanted and distorted take on Israel and the source of its support in America.

Somehow today, appreciating that America is a uniquely great nation invites the label, from this same left-wing crowd, of "white supremacist" — which, as a black woman, I find amusing...read more >>

Star Parker: What happens when liberal fascists ambush Chelsea Clinton? The retreat into labels, identity politics, is the lazy man's formula for justice.

Star Parker says that the US is becoming less white and threatens Republicans. But Parker believes the GOP can still win if they follow some of her tips: The Pew Research Center has produced a projected profile of what the American electorate will look like ethnically in the 2020 elections.

The portrait shows a continued trend of America becoming an increasingly nonwhite nation and electorate.

Pew projects that 66.7 percent of eligible voters in 2020 will be white. In the presidential election in 2016, 71 percent of voters were white.

In 2000, 76.4 percent of eligible voters were white, 10 points more than Pew projects for 2020. When President Reagan was elected in 1980, 88 percent of the electorate was white.

A number of factors are driving the ethnic changes of the country. One, of course, is the large Hispanic immigration of recent years.

But another key factor is fertility rates. Whites are having fewer children than blacks and Hispanics.

The political implications of these changes are profound.

Nonwhite Americans vote disproportionately for Democrats. So, if voting patterns of nonwhite Americans stay consistent, every year it will become more difficult to elect Republicans, as ethnic and racial minorities become an increasingly larger percentage of the electorate.


In 2016, Donald Trump won 58 percent of the white vote. However, he lost every other ethnicity by large margins.

He won 8 percent of blacks, 29 percent of Hispanics and 29 percent of Asians.

Not surprisingly, this picture translates into the makeup of today's 116th Congress.

Racial and ethnic minorities now hold 116 seats in the current Congress, compared with the 63 seats they held in the 107th Congress in 2001.

And, again, the political implications are profound. Ninety percent of these seats held by racial and ethnic minorities are Democrats.

The last election added nine members to the Congressional Black Caucus, bringing it to 55 members, the largest it has ever been in history. The CBC today is more than 50 percent larger than where it stood in 2001.

This now makes the Black Caucus a formidable left-wing bloc to be reckoned with.

This was on display recently in the failure of the House Democratic leadership to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar, as originally intended, for her anti-Semitic remarks.

Even though it is reported that Omar was prepared to accept the House resolution initially put forth by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the CBC pushed back against this and, together with other far-left-wing elements in the Party, succeeded in getting a revised, much-watered-down resolution.

Is it inevitable that the nation will move left as the country becomes less and less white?

Not necessarily — if Republicans do their work. ...read more

Star Parker: How the GOP can win as America becomes less white Blacks are more conservative and less liberal than the typical Democrat.

Ken Blackwell says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal is already here and how Americans who oppose it can fight back:

oliticians in Washington are often immersed in endless political fights with little regard for the impact of the policies they are actually fighting over. We see this with taxes, regulations, spending, trade and other issues. The decisions they make often have unforeseen consequences in communities and small towns.

This week, the left’s new rising star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her allies, introduced their far-reaching radical “Green New Deal.” These ideas are not only being discussed in Washington, but they are actually well under way and causing great debate and conflict in many communities throughout the United States.

In New York, Governor Cuomo and his green energy bureaucrats have imposed mandates to reduce carbon emissions. Appealingly entitled Clean Energy Standards (CES), these mandates call for over 50 percent of the state’s utilities to generate electricity through renewable sources by 2030. In addition, Governor Cuomo issued an executive order mandating over 2,000 megawatts of energy be generated, also by 2030, using offshore wind.

How is all of this being paid for you might ask. Well, by the same folks who always pay – you, the taxpayer.

Indeed to fund the CES, New Yorkers will pay an increase of $3.6 billion in electricity costs according to a report by Continental Economics. That’s just to get things going. By 2050, New Yorkers will be subsidizing Cuomo’s green new deal to a tune of over one trillion dollars, “providing scant, if any, measurable benefits” the report states.

Footnote: U.S. per person CO2 emissions have declined to their lowest levels in over six decades. The U.S. Energy Administration reports that from 2005-2017 U.S. energy related emissions are down 14 percent.

But it’s not just about the numbers, the money and the costs. There is tremendous environmental and community impact experienced by the deployment of green energy. Utility scale solar facilities, not built in the desert, require destruction of the land – trees and farms – and they can permanently alter the character of the community.

There is additional risk from muddy runoff, which can impact roads, streams and tributaries. Water is needed for cleaning the panels so solar companies often have to tap into water sources impacting local wells and aquifers. If decommissioning is not handled appropriately, when their use is complete, these solar fields can be left to rot causing additional environmental damage, waste of land and taxpayers being left to pay the clean-up costs. ...read more

Ken Blackwell: The 'Green New Deal' is well underway -- how Americans can fight back Politicians in Washington are often immersed in endless political fights with little regard for the impact of the policies they are actually fighting ...